D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Thomas Shey]

My only normative judgment is that the norm should be that people examine and approach games with the mindset of “I wonder how this game works” rather than “Does this game work the way I think it should.”

Its like my attempt when reviewing things to ask "Does this item seem to do what it sets out to do well?" rather than "Do I like what it set out to do?" I said many years ago that after examination, Fate seems to do fairly well a thing I really kind of don't want to do.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No, I think that's perfectly legitimate, but at some point you need to be aware that, if you have idiosyncratic wants, that's not going to matter overly much to people in conversation. Its worth bringing up when people start to get overly-universalist in their discussion (as compared to generalist) but its like Pedantic and me; our gamist desires are probably just irrelevant to most people in this thread other than as a curiosity.

I've always thought one of the reasons people bring up their wants is because they want to see who shares them, because it's nice to find people who like what you like. I've certainly done that in my time on this site.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Its like my attempt when reviewing things to ask "Does this item seem to do what it sets out to do well?" rather than "Do I like what it set out to do?" I said many years ago that after examination, Fate seems to do fairly well a thing I really kind of don't want to do.

See, my thought is that if you don't like it, and you aren't under some obligation to analyze it, what's the benefit to doing so?

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've always thought one of the reasons people bring up their wants is because they want to see who shares them, because it's nice to find people who like what you like. I've certainly done that in my time on this site.

It can be nice to take the temperature of the forum in that regard, but it also means you have to recognize that the proper response from the posting populace as a whole to some things important to you is going to be "So?" I kind of expect that on some things I post, honestly.

 

[Thomas Shey]

See, my thought is that if you don't like it, and you aren't under some obligation to analyze it, what's the benefit to doing so?

It allows me to understand what other people see in things, even if they aren't to my taste.

 

[TwoSix]

See, my thought is that if you don't like it, and you aren't under some obligation to analyze it, what's the benefit to doing so?

A desire to understand the greater world around us? Knowledge for its own sake?

I mean, I know all 50 US state capitals despite the fact I've only been to like 15 states. And I don't normally need the auspices of other state governments.

I know who the prime minister of Canada, and how their parliamentary system works, despite the fact I don't like in Canada or even live in a country with a parliamentary system.

It's just fun to know and understand things!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

On the other hand I'm not sure I'd even categorize their other example as fail forward - they fail to stop a thief. They manage to track down the thief only to find them dead and now have another trail to follow. To me that's just ensuring that a single incident doesn't end the campaign, the fact that the rogue they tracked down was dead isn't even particularly relevant. Not stopping the theft was a fail, they just had other options to get the McGuffin by tracking down the thief.

It's not, and it illustrates a much more common pattern in Narrativist play. Hino sees a bunch of peasants being driven into an assault by a troop of samurai. She's incensed and I roll to resist her attachment (loyalty to the farmers of Iga). I fail, and she whips out her dodgy arquebus (dodgy due to a 7-9 on a roll to acquire it) and takes a shot at the Samurai Captain. The gun explodes and she's stunned. Her unit's position in ambush is revealed and the Samurai charge her men. She attempts to fight off the samurai but fails a leadership test, her men take massive casualties and she's left facing the Captain in single combat.

There's no fail forward here, just escalating situation as each failure compounds the risks! It went from tactically advantageous position to almost total disaster. Lucky for me, I guess, I managed to win a couple checks after that and due to some preparations we at least took down the samurai and Hino didn't die right there.

This illustrates the way resolution is focused on narrative, but not task. Fail forward is possible, but not all that prevalent.

 

[AlViking]

It's not, and it illustrates a much more common pattern in Narrativist play. Hino sees a bunch of peasants being driven into an assault by a troop of samurai. She's incensed and I roll to resist her attachment (loyalty to the farmers of Iga). I fail, and she whips out her dodgy arquebus (dodgy due to a 7-9 on a roll to acquire it) and takes a shot at the Samurai Captain. The gun explodes and she's stunned. Her unit's position in ambush is revealed and the Samurai charge her men. She attempts to fight off the samurai but fails a leadership test, her men take massive casualties and she's left facing the Captain in single combat.

There's no fail forward here, just escalating situation as each failure compounds the risks! It went from tactically advantageous position to almost total disaster. Lucky for me, I guess, I managed to win a couple checks after that and due to some preparations we at least took down the samurai and Hino didn't die right there.

This illustrates the way resolution is focused on narrative, but not task. Fail forward is possible, but not all that prevalent.

Which was kind of my point (I think), people are using Fail Forward to mean different things. What @pemerton is talking about is just keeping the story moving forward taking into consideration the failure. That is not how other people use the phrase. Hence the confusion.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Multiple people have stated that if the players do not have full knowledge of the situation they can't possibly make an informed decision and it's bad GMing. I disagree, I want mystery and discovery when I play. Even when it comes back to bite me on the posterior.

I can't speak for others, but what I want is clear stakes. I want to know what I'm risking, what the potential rewards are, and how the rules of the game work in this situation. If @Lanefan tells me I am going to have to figure out what the rays do, that's fine. What are the ways to do that, and what are the benefits and risks of each strategy.

What I don't want is a ton of long tedious low stakes prefatory play that could be elided. I don't want situations where I do the thing and some completely unknown factor is suddenly injected into play which snatches victory from my hands, or turns one level of risk/consequences into something different.

 

[Gimby]

See, my thought is that if you don't like it, and you aren't under some obligation to analyze it, what's the benefit to doing so?

So I can better understand why I don't like it so I can avoid doing similar things in my own games? It might be there's some itch in my own play that I'm not quite sure how to articulate but is laid bare by a larger example. For example I might find something a bit off wandering monsters and their relationship to exploration turns. Looking at an unfamiliar example might reveal to me the thing I don't like is them not being foreshadowed as I don't know in advance what they will be (particularly a problem with the "roll again on a higher table" results some have) so instead of wandering monsters rolls I start to track the movement of all monster groups in the dungeon and can properly foreshadow them.

I might not realise that's particularly the problem I have with them until I read discussion of Fail Forward techniques and the responses to them (the old arguments about failing a lock pick attempt causing a bear to show up, for example) when I realise that's not wholly different in principle from exploration turns and wandering monster rolls (a roll is failed, a monster shows up because of it) The details are important of course (you can argue that it's time rather than lockpicking, but failing the roll causes you to spend the time, for example) and an insight might not be useful directly, but it can sometimes be illuminating.